


Saved

by foramomentonly



Series: Meet Ugly Drabbles and Fics [12]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Foster Care, M/M, Negative perspective on organized Christianity, Religion, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29986677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foramomentonly/pseuds/foramomentonly
Summary: Blatantly stealing titles from early aughts teen films of my youth at this point.Meet ugly inspired by aewriting.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Meet Ugly Drabbles and Fics [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773934
Comments: 42
Kudos: 97





	Saved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aewriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aewriting/gifts).



Alex meets his dormmate briefly in the hall as he and his parents are heading out to lunch. Michael Guerin is friendly, his barely-contained, nervous energy evident in the restless way he passes his hands through his close-cropped curls. His parents are formal, bordering on sour, and they glare at Alex’s eyeliner and polished fingernails with disdain. They don’t invite him to eat with them. Then again, Alex thinks as they part and he wanders towards the room he’ll share with Michael, his own father didn’t even bother to drop him off at school. Glass houses, or some shit like that.

Michael has claimed the left side of the room, his bed neatly made up with simple, blue sheets and his desk stuffed with thick textbooks, some already clearly marked with wear. A battered, clunky-looking laptop charges on his nightstand. Some secret tension in Alex slowly uncoils with the knowledge that he isn’t sharing living space with some rich prick; when he eschewed the Manes family military tradition for higher education, Alex left home with little more than his scholarships and a military duffle stuffed with clothes and stolen linens to his name. Knowing his days of watching douchebags like Kyle Valenti flaunt expensive tokens of their parents’ unconditional love are over is a small comfort. 

That is, until Alex notices the crucifix resting on Michael's plaid pillowcase. It’s innocuous enough; Liz Ortecho's small home has plenty, family heirlooms hung as reverently as Texas gas station finds, and Alex counts her among his true family. But the facts fall into place like thundering dominos—Michael’s parents' disgust at Alex's makeup, the family's conservative clothes, Michael's closely-chopped hair and, after a bit of snooping, the two well-worn Bibles Alex finds, one in Michael's nightstand and the other on his small bookshelf. Fundamentalists, most likely. Alex swears loud and defiant into the empty room. He thought he'd left bigots and homophobes in his dust, but like a plague of fucking locusts, they followed him, and here he is about to share a sink with one of them. 

But Alex also knows better than most that kids aren’t always carbon copies of their parents’ stupidity; he’d flip his shit if someone assumed they knew literally anything about his beliefs based on his asshole father. So when Michael returns to the room Alex is in stealth mode, spread out across his bed and feigning disinterest by flipping through his welcome packet, tracking Michael’s movements out of the corner of his eye. Michael blows a loud puff of air out through his lips and looks like he’s about to flop onto his bed. When he sees the crucifix, he freezes; Alex is about to celebrate a victory against religious indoctrination when Michael lifts the small cross reverently off his pillow and, after an appraising scan of his space, hangs it low on the wall above his nightstand, dragging his school-issued lamp in front of it. He jerks his chin down in a small nod of satisfaction before his eyes dart quickly over to Alex; he almost catches Alex in a glower. Instead, Alex is quietly seething over an intramural sports schedule, his face blank, eyes burning holes in the middle of the page. He figures he’s in the clear when he hears Michael’s bedsprings creak with the sudden weight of his body. Alex glances up and Michael is crossing his arms lazily behind his head. He lets out a loud, satisfied sigh and shoots Alex a disarmingly sincere grin.

“Free at last, huh?” he drawls, and Alex arches a cold brow.

“Sure.”

Alex has every intention of icing Michael out of his daily existence, but as months go by—months where Michael lets his curls grow wild, rambles on and on about the science of irrigation, offers Alex his extensive biology notes for midterms, and laughs loud and deep at all of Alex’s snarky asides—Alex finds himself smiling easily at Michael in return, willingly passing lazy lunch hours and weekend afternoons with him. It comes down to this: for all Michael hasn’t done—the crucifix is an ever-present shadow above his nightstand and weekly video check-ins with his parents are never missed—he just doesn’t fit the mold. He smokes weed on the abandoned picnic tables behind the dorm at night, signs every social justice-oriented pledge and petition shoved at him on a cheap, plastic clipboard on their way to class, and he never wakes up before noon on Sundays. He isn’t fire and brimstone, hate and hellfire. He’s marshmallow fluff; laid back and open, sweet and eager to please, all messy curls and broad shoulders and goofy smiles with too much teeth and— _ oh, fuck _ . Alex is in love with him. 

Alex is in love with Michael and Michael probably thinks Alex deserves to burn in hell and it’s Kyle all over again. Alex was never in love with Kyle Valenti, but he loved him the way a neglected, angry little boy  _ would _ love the popular, gregarious kid who was his only source of sunlight. Graciously. Blindly. Kyle was Alex’s best friend, and when middle school puberty made evident that Kyle was a stud and Alex was, well. Alex felt the betrayal of Kyle’s sudden targeted cruelty like a punch to the gut, long before Kyle or his new friends ever laid hands on him. And now, Alex realizes, Michael is his best friend and his heart’s deepest desire and, he’s finally ready to admit, who he jerks off to on lazy mornings after Michael’s barely made it out the door for his 8 a.m. class with a shirt on. Alex is well and truly  _ fucked _ . “Damned” is too on the nose.

Then one day Alex is dragging his miserably-in-love ass back from class and he totally misses the tie that slipped from the doorknob onto the ugly carpet in front of their door and he opens it on Michael and some random  _ guy  _ going at it on Michael’s bed, sheets bunched at the foot of the mattress, shirts tossed inside out on the floor, and Michael’s hand deep down the guy’s jeans as he pants and whines into Michael’s mouth.

“Shit!” Alex cries, waffling between shutting the door behind him to shield them from the prying eyes of hallway passers-by or in front of him to shut himself out of his own room. “I-I’m so sorry.”

Michael looks flustered, but it’s not the bone-deep terror of being outed; Alex is intimately familiar with  _ that  _ darkest timeline of queer identity. His boyfriend—hook up?—just looks annoyed. His dark eyes glare at Alex and he snaps, “Do you mind, man?” with a sharp nod towards the door. Alex squares his jaw and opens his mouth to retort when Michael says softly, seriously, “Don’t talk to him like that,” shaking his head at his bedmate. The guy huffs in disbelief, rolling off the bed to pull on his shirt, still inside out, and fasten his jeans, brushing his fingers through messy, deep brown hair. 

“You’re seriously kicking  _ me  _ out right now?” he murmurs low, and when Michael doesn't answer, he spits, “You are such a dick.”

Michael winces and bites his lip, normally bright eyes dim and gaze cast down towards his own hands. The sight of Michael cowed, flushed and hurt and getting told off by the same Hot Topic reject who was getting off  _ with _ him not five minutes ago trips Alex's long-dormant kill switch. He steps into the guy's space, pulling back his shoulders so his shirt stretches tight over the muscles of his arms and chest, and draws up to his full height.

"You have thirty seconds to get the fuck out of our room," Alex says, voice low and eerily calm, even to his own ears. The guy glowers at Alex, but the corner of his mouth twitches and he blinks first, intimidation evident in his narrowed eyes. He brushes past Alex and slams the door behind him.

"Are you okay?" Alex asks, moving closer to Michael on instinct and setting a comforting hand on his bare shoulder. Michael gazes up at him with wide, honey eyes, opens his soft, pink mouth, and blurts, "I love you."

Alex blinks, gapes, and what comes out of his mouth is an incredulous, “But I’m gay!”

Michael snorts, cups Alex’s forearm gently and runs his palm up and down his skin, the soft hair on his arms.

“Yeah, I know. That’s kinda why I’m hoping I have a shot.” He pauses, hesitation creeping across his face, and he takes his hand off of Alex abruptly, as though he hadn’t quite realized he’d put it there in the first place. “If you’re not interested, I totally—”

“No, no, I am,” Alex says, and the wattage of Michael’s answering grin could power the university’s electric grid for the rest of the semester. “But I thought you were, like, Team Westboro or whatever.”

Michael’s face falls, his whole body withers, and he hugs his arms around his naked waist. The impact of Alex's words on Michael horrify him, and he drops onto the bed next to Michael, takes Michael's hand in his and strokes his thumb across it’s back, feels the knots of Michael’s knuckles as he grips Alex's hand in return.

“Why the hell would you think that?” Michael asks, staring at their palms pressed together in his lap.

Alex shrugs, answers, "I mean, I didn't. I don't. Not about, like,  _ you. _ " Michael turns his head, brow wrinkled in confusion. "It's just. The cross? The Bibles? Your  _ parents _ , I—"

"They're not my parents, "Michael interrupts, voice flat. "They raised me, but. They never formally adopted me, and I'd have fucking run the other direction if I thought they were gonna."

Alex stays quiet, waits for Michael to continue, squeezes his hand gently to let Michael know he's listening.

"They're Fundamentalist assholes, for sure, but I never bought into that shit, especially once I—I realized I like more than just girls." Michael reaches out, pushes his lamp out of the way and glares at the crucifix. "I'd love to never see their fucking faces _ever_ again, but winter break is coming up, and then summer vacation, and—" He hangs his head, nearly whispers, "I need to have a place to go. I can't afford an apartment on my own yet. So I play nice. Put _that_ on my wall and make sure it's in the background for video calls. There’s, like, zero support for kids who age out of the system alone. I fucking hate it, but I _need_ them." 

Michael leans his head close to Alex's, catches his gaze and holds it with deep, whiskey-colored eyes Alex all but falls into.

"I'm not ashamed of what I like or who I love," he says, "and I'm so fucking in love with you, Alex. I just thought maybe you weren't into me."

Alex licks his lips, and a flush of arousal darkens his cheeks as Michael tracks the movements of his tongue with hungry concentration.

"I'm  _ extremely  _ into you," he says, his throat very suddenly bone dry, his voice husky. Michael's gaze hasn't moved from his lips, but he has flipped Alex's hand in his lap, starts running slow, feather-light brushes of his fingertips across Alex's palm and up his arm, fingers snaking under the short sleeve of Alex's shirt.

"I really wanna kiss you," Michael breathes, "but I’m also aware you just walked in on me hooking up with, like, Alex Manes-lite, so I—"

Alex closes the distance between them, pressing his lips to Michael's and cupping his neck, fingers finding their way into Michael's curls like he's been fantasizing about for so long. They're silky, clingy, and Michael tastes like lingering mouthwash and he smells like rain and Alex presses himself into Michael's lap, desperate to feel Michael's arms around his waist, the hard press of his chest against Alex's.

"I really want to do more than kiss you," Alex pants when they reluctantly part for air, when Michael’s fingers slip beneath his shirt and his nails scrape down Alex’s spine, and Alex feels the touch much lower on the geography of his skin.

Michael laughs, loud and free, and his strong hands on Alex's hips guide his legs apart until Alex is straddling his lap, those same hands pushing Alex's shirt up his chest, over his head.

"Thank  _ God _ ," Michael laughs and reaches for Alex's belt.


End file.
